


Not Always What They Seem

by antigrav_vector



Series: CapIM Bingo fills - 2016-2 [22]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Iron Man (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Cap_Ironman Bingo, Fem!Tony, Female Tony Stark, Identity Reveal, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Silver Age, Stony Bingo, Stony Bingo 2016, gender swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 14:04:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8670469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: Tony takes a hit meant for Steve. This has some consequences. That blast was magical, after all, and his armour didn't block it properly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for the "I Hate Magic" prompt on my bingo card. Unbeta'ed, so please forgive any remaining errors.

Tony watched Steve fly through the air, hit with the full power of whatever magical energy blast that had been. He'd been rushing over to try to block the attack Steve hadn't seen coming, and been that fraction of a second too late.

Now he was hurrying to catch Steve before he slammed into the side of a building.

They were fighting some magic user new on the supervillainous scene. He was calling himself something ridiculous like Magistro. Magnificistro? Whatever.

Tony forced the thoughts aside and focused on getting to Steve. The asshat's nom de guerre didn't matter. The arc of Steve's trajectory changed subtly as the shield caught the air, and Tony realised Steve was trying to slow his flight.

Good.

A short blast of his bootjets and he was within arm's reach of his teammate. He snagged Steve around the waist and hauled back, sending them up rather than forward, adjusting their trajectory with his bootjets as best he could. They skimmed the surface of the building for a couple of floors, and then Tony redirected them again, turning back to the fight.

Magniscro was watching them and laughing, nimbly dodging Thor's attacks and Jan's stingers. "Now, heroes," he taunted them, "how do you like the feel of my aureant blasters?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "Not bad," he called back, confident that he could block said blasters, "but you'll have to do better than that."

"Hah!" Mognisco exclaimed, "that sad excuse for a bluff won't work, Iron Man! Have a taste of this!"

He fired a larger blast at Tony, who was in the process of lowering Steve to the ground so they could both rejoin the fight. Tony, caught halfway through the motion, couldn't do more than turn to put his back to the blast, shielding Steve from the full effects.

When it hit, it burned and seemed to suck all the strength right out of him. Tony bit back a pained yell. Steve shouted something Tony couldn't make out over the ringing in his ears, but it sounded somewhere between pained and worried.

Tony just about managed to get Steve to solid ground with the last of his endurance, and then the world seemed to narrow down to a pinprick before it went black.

\------

When he woke, it was clear the fight was over. There were hands on him, removing his boots and the now-flexible mesh that protected his legs when it was powered up. "Not the chestplate," he managed to say.

Steve, who had been leaning over him, from his position at Tony's right shoulder, paused. "Iron Man! Thank goodness!"

Tony paused, too. His voice sounded different, even to his own ears. For that matter, the armour was uncomfortably tight around his chest and hips.

A suspicion began to take root that Tony _hoped with all his might_ was wrong. Hank, who was at his feet, continued working the boots and mesh off him.

Setting it aside for the moment, Tony asked, "You get everything contained?"

Steve nodded. "Thor and Jan are overseeing the handover to the police."

"He did something to me," Tony admitted.

"We thought as much when you went down that hard, Shellhead." Steve replied, his hand going to Tony's armoured shoulder as if seeking comfort. "Do you know what he did? Do we need to call Dr. Strange?"

"Ugh, that pompous ass?" Tony groaned.

"Come on," Steve insisted, "talk to me. What's wrong?"

"I," Tony hesitated, "I think he turned me into a woman?"

Hank's hands stopped dead in their movements and disappeared. It left Tony feeling oddly cold and vulnerable.

Steve blinked down at him, stunned. "Ah." There was a slightly awkward pause and then Steve cleared his throat. "I... Okay. Anything else we need to know?"

"Don't think so?" Tony gave Steve a once over; Cap _looked_ fine, but that didn't always mean he _was_ fine. "What about you? He caught you with that blast, too."

Steve shrugged.

Hank broke his uncharacteristic silence to say, "We haven't observed any effects on the Cap. The plan is to keep you both under observation until we can get Strange to take a look at you."

Tony made a face, happy enough to be able to hide it behind his faceplate. Observation. Ugh. At least he didn't have any meetings in the next 24 hours that Mrs. Arbogast couldn't get him out of. He'd have to let her know pronto, though. He was pretty sure she suspected he was Iron Man, but she was too discreet to say a word about it, and he wasn't about to broach the topic.

As he started composing the memo to her in his head, Tony was taken by the arm and hauled to his feet, remaining armour and all. Once he was there, he staggered slightly, unused to the sudden change in his center of gravity. "Whoa."

Steve caught him by a shoulder before he could go back down, and held him on his feet until he was steady. "You sure you're alright, there?"

"I'm fine," Tony grumbled. "You try having your gender changed suddenly and see how well you do at balancing."

Steve laughed at him. "I had a similar problem after Rebirth," he offered. "Come on, let's get you back to the mansion. We both need showers, and I'm sure you want out of that armour."

What he wanted, Tony bit back a sigh, was to be back to normal.

\------

Rather to his surprise, Dr. Strange had shown up almost immediately after they'd cleaned up, presumably summoned by Thor or Jan, and stepped right up to Steve. He'd waved his hands in the air and muttered incantations under his breath but nodded after a minute. "No need to worry, Captain," he said when he was through, "the spell should wear off in a couple of days."

"What did it even do to me?" Steve asked. "We couldn't work that out."

"Oh, nothing serious," Strange swept away something only he could see with one hand. "It was an attempt to compel you to speak nothing but the truth."

Steve, to Tony's surprise, accepted that without question, and nodded. "And what about Iron Man? He said the spell changed his gender."

"Hm. That is potentially more serious." Strange turned to him. "Iron Man?"

Tony, who'd armoured himself back up for this discussion, shrugged. "Yeah?"

"You are sure it was a physical transformation of your body and not a glamour?" Strange asked, beginning to do a similar 'analysis' on him as he had for Steve.

"Pretty sure. Wearing the armour is uncomfortable right now, but I don't want to alter it if I don't have to." Tony replied, knowing he probably sounded very irritable. But he kind of was.

"Well," Strange said after a minute, "the bad news is you're correct."

Steve beat him to the next question: "What's the good news?"

"The transformation, being a forced one and not done with Iron Man's consent, will also wear off in a few days, if not sooner. The length of time such spells last varies depending on the subject's strength of will. In the meantime, breaking the spell would cause intense pain."

"So I'm stuck like this." Tony reached up to scrub at his face with his hands, not thinking about the motion, and was brought up short when his gauntlets hit his faceplate with a clang. "How long will it take to wear off?"

"A day to a week," Strange said, sounding almost sympathetic.

Well, damn. Tony mentally edited his memo to Mrs. Arbogast.

He really did hate magic.

\------

Four days later, Tony was just counting down the hours until he could get back to normal. Everything about his life was just... Off. His clothes no longer fit, getting dressed was an ordeal, and using the toilet was just harrowing.

Jan had cornered him after Strange's consultation and dragged him out shopping. 'Come on,' she'd said. 'Get out of that armour and into some street clothes. We need to get you some things to wear until you're back to normal.'

Knowing how that would end, Tony had put his foot down. Sure, he could always donate the things at the end of the week, but he didn't want to subject himself to the whole rigmarole. Instead, he'd ordered a few pairs of jeans and tshirts in what he thought were roughly the right sizes, to be delivered to the mansion.

Really, the biggest source of discomfort was the chestplate he couldn't do without.

He'd tried to settle in to charge it the evening after the fight, and found that something about his temporary physiology was causing a short somewhere. He'd zapped himself pretty hard without meaning to, before he could find it. And, to make matters worse, it had caused the metal of the chestplate to heat up and given him a minor burn in a spot that would be tough to reach without taking the whole chestplate off.

In the end, he'd given in and done just that to fix the short, but he wasn't happy about it. Even the short time he'd needed to put the fix in place had left him weak and short of breath.

Steve had very nearly interrupted him, and Tony had been forced to hide in his ensuite bathroom or be rather rudely unmasked. Steve had blushed hard enough, on guessing (incorrectly) that Tony was hiding because he was undressed, that Tony had worried Steve might be stuck like that permanently.

Once Steve had managed to regain his composure, he'd insisted on checking on Iron Man properly -- albeit once he was dressed.

Faced with the choice of telling Steve who was in the armour, Tony winced. He could open the door in civilian clothes and Steve likely wouldn't recognize him. He looked surprisingly different in this weird feminine form. Or he could tell Steve and end the charade.

If there was anyone he could trust in to keep his secret, after all, it would be Captain America.

Tony carefully skirted the issue of wanting to ask Steve out to dinner.

On the other hand, once the cat was out of the bag, there would be no getting it back in. Even Steve, conscientious as he was, could slip someday and the result would be utter financial chaos for Stark Enterprises. His stock price would plummet and he would no doubt lose a lot of contracts to the news.

In the end it wasn't even a question. Tony bit back a sigh. He couldn't. He couldn't risk his company, and, thereby, the lives of all his employees. He couldn't risk losing the money his company brought in, and, thus, the Avengers' main source of funding, equipment and upgrades. He couldn't. Not with a clean conscience.

"Shellhead?" Steve's voice shattered the slight reverie he'd lost himself in.

"Alright, alright," Tony called back, wincing at the much higher octave his voice was suddenly in. At least he hadn't lost too much height to the transformation. A centimeter or two. His muscle mass had also stayed almost the same. The biggest changes had been the sudden appearances of a pair of (actually quite nice) tits and hips he'd have wanted to run his own hands over and enjoy, had they been on someone else.

Making a face and setting aside the bizarre and rather narcissistic thoughts, Tony opened the door, wearing the helmet and chestplate. He hadn't bothered with the rest of the armour, which had left him in a pair of jeans that more or less fit without threatening to slide right off him. He caught Steve's eyes through his mask and held them for a moment. "What can I do for you, Cap?"

Steve hesitated for the briefest moment. "You feeling alright?"

Tony raised an eyebrow at his friend, despite knowing Steve couldn't see it. "No different than yesterday."

Nodding awkwardly, Steve blurted out, "Will you come to dinner with me? I mean with the team. I'm not trying to make advances. Just, you haven't joined us since... I'm-- we're all worried. Just... oh hell."

Watching incredulously as Steve tried to turn tail in utter embarrassment, Tony couldn't help but laugh. "Really, Winghead? After all the years we've known each other, all the strange things we've been through together, _this_ is what's going to make you uncomfortable?"

"I never have been able to talk to dames-- err, women. Especially the pretty ones." Steve responded with a resigned tone in his voice.

... Steve thought he was pretty? Despite never having really gotten a good look at his face? What was even happening here?

"Of course, you're not a dame, and that only makes this more embarrassing," Steve went on.

Tony shook his head in an attempt to clear it. "Steve," he said, laughing, breaking into the monologue he could sense building, "shut up. I'm not offended. Let's go eat, and we can finish this discussion afterward."

"I don't think I want to." Steve groaned and rubbed at the back of his neck. His ears were still a bit pink. It was weirdly attractive. 

Slinging an arm around Steve's shoulders, Tony steered him in the direction of the dining room. "You know," he commented quietly, his voice low now that they were not longer in the privacy of his room, "that just makes me think this is all the more overdue."

\------

In the end, they never did have that discussion. Steve had reluctantly followed Tony back up to his room with the intent to hash things out, because Tony had put his foot down, but then Steve had asked about the chestplate and what it did, and somehow that had led to him _touching_ , and Tony hadn't been able to resist.

They'd ended up making out on Iron Man's only rarely used bed, their hands wandering. Steve had uttered a few token protests, and so had Tony, but neither of them had wanted to stop. Tony, seeing an opportunity to have Steve in bed for a night, hadn't had the strength of will to turn him away.

It hadn't helped that Steve was apparently as good in bed as he was shy around women. Everything had escalated very quickly, and it hadn't taken long for him to persuade Tony out of his clothes and helmet. Or onto the bed.

Reassured by Steve's lack of shocked reaction to seeing him -- well aside from the near-reverent way Steve's hands traced over his skin and lingered at the hips he'd reluctantly admired earlier -- Tony had gone along with the idea pretty happily. Steve didn't recognise him and Tony'd wanted this for a long time, after all. Steve was unfairly attractive and there'd been a tension between them for almost as long as Tony could remember. Jan had even commented on it once.

Wanting to feel Steve's skin _all_ over him, he'd turned the tables, then, insistently peeling Steve out of his own clothes. It had led to a discussion. Tony had quite liked the idea of wall sex, but Steve's insistence that the first time should be on a flat surface had eventually prevailed. After Steve had fingered him to orgasm, Tony knew why. He was pretty sure his knees would have given out, had he been attempting to stand.

Steve leaned over him, looking quite pleased with himself, and Tony couldn't have that, altered physiology or no. Leaning up to pull Steve into a kiss, he grinned. "My turn. On the bed; I want a turn on that ride."

\------

The next morning, Tony woke to a strangled yelp, still sprawled over Steve.

Grumbling a curse under his breath he pulled the covers up over his head. "It's too early. Go back to sleep, Steve."

"... Mr. Stark?"

Fuck. His hands tightened around the blanket. "Don't suppose I can convince you this is another consequence of the spell?"

"You'd have to be very convincing." Steve didn't sound too upset.

"Thought so. Guess that secret's out." Tony didn't move. If anything, he closed what little distance separated them. As long as Steve let him, he intended to stay right where he was.

"Guess so." One of Steve's hands came up to rub at his back through the blanket, making Tony tense, startled by the unexpected touch. "I can see why you might want to keep it under wraps, now. I didn't before. But then, I never would have imagined it could possibly be you. Always thought Iron Man had to be some average Joe you hired because he was smart in addition to being a good fighter."

Tony huffed at him. "That's what I wanted the world to think."

"Well, it worked. But I have to tell you, you're not the most subtle person in the world."

The non sequitur made Tony blink, confused. "What?"

"Now that I know, it's easy to see," Steve clarified, carefully pushing the blanket back down over Tony's head and tilting his face up with a finger under Tony's chin. "You mannerisms and the way you talk with your hands. They're the same in both your personas."

"I'll show you what I can do with my hands," Tony grumbled at him.

"Later," Steve agreed, surprising Tony again and letting go of his face.

A short silence fell between them. "I won't tell anyone, if that's what you want," Steve offered as Tony was about to give up on the discussion and bury his face in the crook of Steve's neck while he still could. "But I do think you should tell the team, just in case we have another emergency to deal with that might mean we need to pry you out of your armour."

"I'll think about it." The fact that Steve hadn't already run for the metaphorical hills was in Tony's favor, but he still hesitated before he asked. "Can I interest you in dinner? For two."

He could tell he'd surprised Steve by the way the man tensed under him. "Didn't think you were interested in men."

"I could say the same," Tony riposted, "and yet here we are."

Steve thought it over. "As long as you don't pick a place that would turn away anyone not in full suit and tie," he replied.

Tension he hadn't realised he felt left Tony in a rush, leaving him plastered to Steve from neck to ankles. "Suppose I can work with that."


End file.
